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This time, Crazy Kim has upset the wrong country:
Of the two great fences of the Cold War - the one running through Germany and the one running across Korea - only one now remains. In 1989 Germany was reunified: overnight, the possibility of a lethal war fought over the heart of Europe simply vanished. Yet the division of Korea, between a prosperous South and a pauperised North, remains. So does the danger of war, epitomised by crazy Kim's missiles. Why?The answer lies in the different paths taken in 1989 by the two great Communist empires, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. There was no counterweight to the collapse of Communism in central and eastern Europe; it was unequivocal. But at the eastern end of Eurasia, the economic ascent of a still-Communist China has more than compensated for the Soviet implosion. And that, more than anything else, explains the present North Korean stalemate. For it is China, not the United States, that has the power to decide the fate of North Korea. It is China that has consistently propped up the regime's basket-case economy. It is China that has hitherto resisted calls from the United States and Japan for tougher action when Pyongyang has broken its word. Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-07-09 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=158624 |